Thursday, January 10, 2008

Atlanta Agent Quits Due to Bad Market...And She Sucks

Read here about an agent in Atlanta who just can't handle to strains of her current market. So I wrote a broker friend of mine in Atlanta asking him about the agent in the article. The article says

As for McMahon, the Atlanta agent, she still had a nice listing book and plenty of leads when she called it quits. In the end, unreliable buyers, surly sellers, and a lack of office camaraderie contributed to a decision that solidified when home sales and prices dipped. "I was waiting for a time to kind of swing out," she says. She's planning to become a high school science teacher.

My broker friend's response?

I looked her up in MLS - she's some ReMax agent who has closed 7 houses in 2 years (4 of which were new construction on the same street)... I'd quit too if I were her.

Hmmm. Doesn't sound to me like she had a "nice listing book and plenty of leads" with 7 sales over 2 years. I will be blogging soon about the abundance of Realtors just like this that in my opinion just get in the way of the good ones. They don't make $150,000 like they thought they would because hey, real estate is easy. Right? And then they disappear unnoticed in the middle of the night and return to their corporate jobs where they get their paychecks every 2 weeks. Good riddance I say.

1 comment:

I think the "real estate is easy" people are very damaging to your profession, and their leaving is the best thing you could ask for. Those are the people who cause so many homeowners to go the for-sale-by-owner route, because the homeowner didn't see any value in previous interactions with real estate agents. If you can weed out the bad ones, it'll make it all the better for the rest of you.

As you've said before, something like 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people already. This just opens up the market even more for the 20% who deserve to be in the industry.